David Poe dies at 80

David Poe, known to fellow Las Vegas musicians as “Show Dog” and sometimes billing himself as David “Mojo” Poe, died on June 3, 2026, in Las Vegas, the city he had called home for nearly half a century. He was 80. Born Miroslav Drahomir Pohorelec in Alabama, he went by David Poe throughout his professional life and became one of the most versatile reeds players in the world of traditional jazz, recognized as the “#1 musician in Las Vegas” by local peers who voted in the industry.

Poe was a child prodigy on clarinet, featured with Benny Goodman at a young age, and later appeared as a clarinet soloist at Montreal’s World Fair. His instruments ranged across the full saxophone family; alto, tenor, soprano, and bass, as well as clarinet, steel guitar, and five-string banjo, making him one of the rare multi-instrumentalists who could hold his own in nearly any genre. His early professional years took him through the Nashville recording scene, where he was first-call sub for Boots Randolph and made numerous appearances on the Grand Ole Opry. He worked in Minneapolis in the late 1960s with the Leon Boulanger Western Swing Band before eventually heading west.

He settled in Las Vegas in 1979, where he became a cornerstone of the city’s live entertainment world, serving as bandleader, conductor, orchestrator, arranger, musical director, and producer at iconic venues including the Tropicana, Landmark, and Wynn. Being in Vegas, he worked with some of the biggest names in 20th-century entertainment: Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Dick Clark, Liberace, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, James Brown, Little Richard, Roy Orbison, Jackie Gleason, and many others. Goodman called him “a prodigy,” Dick Clark said you could “always count on him,” and Gleason described him as “a walking encyclopedia of tunes and trivia.”

In the traditional jazz world, Poe is remembered as the reeds voice of Uncle Yoke’s Black Dog Jazz Band, the hard-swinging, festival-circuit powerhouse founded by trombonist Steve Yocum from the pool of Walt Disney World’s first-call musicians in 1988. He replaced founding clarinetist Jim Buchmann, and seamlessly plugged into the Black Dogs’ famous collective “head,” the near-telepathic group instinct that made them one of the most electrifying bands on the festival circuit. He appears on multiple Black Dog recordings, including Because We Can!! (1991) and Back on Bourbon (2006), and toured with the band across the United States, Canada, Europe, and China. Alongside Black Dog bandmates Tom Hook, Ed Metz, Jr., and Bobby Durham, he also co-led the side project Big Easy Classic, a jump blues and R&B quartet.